Millions of pounds' worth of “dirty money” from the Russian mafia will flow into London and other European cities from tomorrow after Latvia becomes the 18th state to adopt the euro as its currency, a top academic and Ukip leader Nigel Farage are warning. Professor Mark Galeotti, an expert in former Soviet Union organised crime at New York University, said the money laundering inflow would be “immediate”.
And UK Independence Party boss Mr Farage added it was another piece of evidence showing why the entire EU project was failing.
Latvia’s rulers are ignoring the doubts about the future of the euro as they press on with a long-term vision to create a mini-Switzerland in eastern Europe.
The country already has 20 of its own domestic banks, which is one for every 100,000 residents.
Experts say that is a high ratio and as Latvia is among the most stable countries in the former Soviet Union, it is likely become a destination of choice for the proceeds of organised crime.
Of the 20 domestic banks, 13 are considered “boutique”, meaning they rely almost exclusively on foreign funds, largely from the former Soviet republics.
They engage in relatively little lending to residents or businesses and in that sense they are similar to many Swiss banks.
In such circumstances, a tough banking regulator is needed but Prof Galeotti believes Latvia’s authorities have yet to distinguish themselves in that field.
He says they “lack teeth”.
He said: “Immediately after Latvia joins the eurozone (tomorrow), I imagine we're going to see an actual spike in dubious money flowing in.
“If you have money you want to discreetly move out of the former Soviet Union, Latvia has a lot of advantages."
Latvia's regulator says it has introduced a number of controls aimed at anti-money laundering, counter-terrorist financing, and preventing excessively large sums from entering the banking system.
But Mr Farage told Express Online: “There are many member states of the EU whose standards are frankly below what we should be dealing with.
“Latvia is one of them and we should not be in this political union with them.
“So much of eastern Europe has links to the former Soviet Union where there is a real problem with organised crime.
"The issue with Latvia is that you have a pretty permissible political environment, and you have the massive and quite efficient infrastructure for managing these funds from the East.
“The question is, why wouldn't you want to go to Latvia?
“The regulators don't have teeth.”
He said they maintain "a kind of culture that emerged in Latvia in the late 1990s...which was ultimately 'Latvia desperately needs business,' and therefore the role of the regulator is not to impede business."
Just nine months ago the eurozone had to rescue Cyprus, another small state that had specialized in accepting Russian deposits.
But Latvia’s economy has been the fastest-growing in the EU for the past three years.
Tom Wallace, an analyst at C4ADS, a firm of American security experts, added: “Latvia is an EU member and so acts as a conduit to Western financial institutions.
“If you have money you want to discreetly move out of the former Soviet Union, Latvia has a lot of advantages."
Latvia's regulator says it has introduced a number of controls aimed at anti-money laundering, counter-terrorist financing, and preventing excessively large sums from entering the banking system.
But Mr Farage told Express Online: “There are many member states of the EU whose standards are frankly below what we should be dealing with.
“Latvia is one of them and we should not be in this political union with them.
“So much of eastern Europe has links to the former Soviet Union where there is a real problem with organised crime.”
express

Citing emergency defense regulations, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon has outlawed The Council for European Palestinian Relations, a Belgian-registered non-profit organization that serves as terror group Hamas’s mouthpiece in Europe.
The move, enacted two weeks ago, but revealed by Israeli daily Ha’aretz on Tuesday, means that all of the executives and directors of CEPR, including four current European MPs and a former British cabinet member, could be arrested upon arrival in Israel.
The members of parliament include British Labour MEP Richard Howitt, German representative Alexandra Thein, Swiss MP Geri Müller and British MP Norman Warner, a member of the House of Lords, who was a health minister in Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government, and now serves on the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Palestine. Former British International Development Secretary Clare Short, who resigned in 2003, when the UK entered the Iraq War, is Chair of CEPR’s Board of Trustees, and would also be barred from Israel by the move.
Short told Britain’s The Independent: “I’ve never been with CEPR via Israel, been to Gaza a number of times but always via Rafah.”
The director of the NGO is Dr. Arafat Shoukri, a resident of London who has been active for many years in various organizations working against the State of Israel, and was one of the leaders of the campaign calling for the lifting of the Gaza security blockade, Ha’aretz said.
In the past three years the CEPR has organized six delegations of European MPs, who visited Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. In 2010 Shoukri met with the then-chairman of the EU Parliament. The organization acts as a lobby for the Gaza government in the European Union, the Israeli newspaper said.
Also outlawed by Israel was European Empowerment Services, a Norwegian NGO, and the European Campaign to Remove the Siege Against the Gaza Strip, which Ha’aretz said “is a media name only, without any real organization behind it.”Ha’aretz cited a statement from Israel’s Shin Bet security services as saying that CEPR was declared an illegal organization, “in light of the fact that it is Hamas’ leading organization in Europe, which carries out its activity under cover of being a pro-Palestinian organization. The organization is headed by senior Hamas activists, including Arafat Shoukri and Rami Abdo.”
Meanwhile, Shoukri told The Independent: “The decision of the Israel defense minister is based on false accusations and has no shred of truth and we will challenge it through the legal means.”
While he denied being a Hamas mouthpiece — “The CEPR is a non profit organisation and is not affiliated to any political party whether inside or outside Palestine” — Shoukri pushed for the inclusion of Hamas controlled Gaza in the political process aimed at reaching a peace deal between the Palestinian Authority, controlled by Hamas-rival Fatah, and Israel — “We also believe that the international community should respect the democratic and transparent elections that took place in Palestine 2006 and engage with all representatives of the Palestinian people.”algemeiner

This is what happens when your birth rate craters, your secularism rate spikes and you open the doors to Muslim immigrants because your government has decided that immigration is the key to economic growth.
Ireland’s birth rate has been cut in half since 1970 and is only slightly higher than Sweden. And a good deal lower than that of the Pakistani immigrants it’s importing.
In 2001, there were less than 2000 Muslims in Ireland. Now there are nearly 50,000. By 2020, there will be an estimated 100,000. By 2043, Islam will be Ireland’s second largest religion.
This is the horrifying power of demographics. A few people in the door with a large birth rate become an occupying army in a short matter of time.

Population statistics compiled by the Central Statistics Office confirmed that Islam is now Ireland’s fastest-growing religion and, at its current rate of expansion, it is set to become the second religion in the State after Catholicism by 2043.
The latest Census figures also revealed that 84pc of the Irish population describe themselves as Catholic, down from 91.6pc in the 1991 census.
The second fastest growing religion in Ireland is Orthodox Christianity, where numbers have doubled in the space of five years, rising to 45,223 in 2011. This is almost entirely down to immigration from the former Soviet bloc states where Orthodox Christianity is dominant.
The Protestant religions accounted for some 5pc of the population, dramatically down on figures from 1900-1920.
The number of Irish people with no religion, atheists and agnostics, increased by 400pc in Ireland between 1991 and 2011 to a total of 277,237.

Britain’s MI-5 (domestic intelligence service) has expanded its operations in the neighboring Irish Republic, after increased al Qaeda, and Islamic radical, activity was detected. Three Afghan men were recently arrested, in a room full of bomb making materials. There are dozens of similar suspects under surveillance. For the last three decades, Ireland and Britain have cooperated on domestic security issues, initially because of a mutual need to keep an eye on the IRA (Irish Republican Army) terrorists. The IRA has devolved into a criminal gang, but al Qaeda, and other Islamic radical groups have found Ireland a convenient place to hide out and plan their next atrocity.

Members of the ICCI mosque celebrated the kidnapping of Irish aid worker Margaret Hassan. Children at a school linked to the same mosque mourned the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qa’ida in Iraq;
Irish media has reported that Dr. Ali Selim, a leader in the Irish Muslim Brotherhood, has made comments praising the concept of “martyrdom.”
The Islamic Cultural Centre of Ireland (ICCI) is an important part of the European Muslim Brotherhood serving as host for the European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR), the theological body headed by global Muslim Brotherhood leader Youssef Qaradawi. The ICCI is also the registered headquarters for Qaradawi’s International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS). Noah Al-Kaddo, the ICCI Executive Director, is also an officer of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe (FIOE), the European umbrella organization for the Muslim Brotherhood and the parent organization of the ECFR. Ali Selim is the private secretary to ICCI Imam Hussein Halawa and is described as a “resident theologian.”
Mr. Selim attracted a great deal of local media attention in September 2006 when he told a newspaper interviewer that, ideally, he would like to see Shariah law adopted in Ireland in the “event of a Muslim majority.”

Apparently that time may not be that far away if Muslim settlers are allowed to continue migrating to Ireland.frontpagemag

A French comedian who implied that a Jewish journalist belonged in a gas chamber may be tried for racial incitement for the eighth time.
Paris prosecutors on Monday ordered the opening of a criminal investigation against Dieudonne M’bala M’bala on suspicion of incitement to racial hatred, according to the news site 20minutes.fr. They were reacting to the airing of a television show about Dieudonne earlier this month on France 2, in which he said: “When I hear about Patrick Cohen, I say to myself: You see, the gas chambers … It’s a shame.”
Cohen, a veteran journalist for France Inter, earlier this year criticized France 2 for giving airtime to people with what he termed “sick minds.” He named Dieudonne along with Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss professor who is banned from entering the United States for his support for Palestinian terrorist groups; Holocaust denier Alain Soral; and Marc-Edouard Nabe, an anti-Zionist writer who has been accused of anti-Semitism.
Last month, Dieudonne, a Frenchman of Cameroonian origins, was convicted of racial incitement against Jews in another of his shows. It was his seventh conviction for the same offense, according to LICRA, the France-based International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism.
Last week, French Interior Minister Manuel Valls said that his ministry was considering banning public performances by Dieudonne because he seemed undeterred by the convictions, which came with tens of thousands of dollars in fines.
In recent months, French media have devoted increasing coverage to the spreading of Dieudonne’s ideas in French society, most notably with the increasingly popular “quenelle” gesture, a quasi-Nazi salute designed to circumvent France’s laws against displaying Nazi symbols.
Dieudonne also coined the phrase “shoananas” — a mashup of the Hebrew word for Holocaust and the French word for pineapple, which is seen as a way of suggesting the Holocaust is a myth without violating French laws against genocide denial.jta

If any of the police investigators in Turkey who still haven’t been fired by the Erdogan regime are looking to track down where some of the stolen money went, they might want to look at the same place the Egyptian cops are looking; Gaza.

Israel’s intelligence community has determined that Turkey became the lead financier of Hamas. Israeli sources said Turkey replaced Iran as the leading financial backer of Hamas since 2012.
The sources said the government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan has overseen the transfer of up to $250 million a year to Hamas, particularly the Islamic regime in the Gaza Strip.
“The money is channeled mostly through private sources, but with full coordination with Erdogan and his aides,” a source said.
The sources said Turkey has coordinated the cash transfers with another ally of Hamas. They said Erdogan was working with Qatar, which has been hosting the Hamas leadership since its expulsion from Syria in late 2011.
Turkey has been deemed the only NATO member to recognize Hamas. The sources said Ankara has hosted a Hamas presence, led by Salah Al Arouri, that facilitates operations and cash transfers, mostly to the West Bank.
In 2012, Qatar pledged $400 million to the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip. But the sources said most of the money failed to arrive because of Doha’s crisis with the new military-backed regime in Cairo.
Turkey was also said to have provided training to Hamas security forces. They said the Turkish training, provided by non-government elements aligned with Erdogan, was touted as efforts to enhance order in the Gaza Strip.

The fall of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Sunni-Shiite war over Syria has alienated Hamas from its traditional funding sources. If Erdogan falls in Turkey, a new government may prove to be just as hostile to his old terrorist allies as the new Egyptian government was to Morsi’s Hamas allies.
And that will leave Hamas with no one to rely on except Qatar.frontpagemag

Nicolas Anelka says he won’t do it again. Great. But that does not come close to excusing his behaviour.

Nor does it exonerate West Brom for their grotesque initial response.

Albion, the FA and the anti-discrimination charity Kick It Out are now all conducting investigations. Much will turn on the context in which the striker made a gesture which, as the club belatedly acknowledged, “caused offence in some quarters”.

Let me help with this question of ‘context’.

Over the Christmas period there were serious disturbances in Lyon, France, about the ‘quenelle’, the salute which is said to combine an upside-down Nazi salute with a French gesture that has an obscene meaning.

It was invented by Anelka’s mate, Dieudonne M’bala M’bala. He has been fined seven times for making anti-Semitic statements. And in response to criticism from a Jewish journalist, Dieudonne said: “When I hear Patrick Cohen talking, I think of gas ovens.” That is the context.

Those are the appalling circumstances in which Anelka chose to make the salute “to support his friend” during a match which, as he must have known, was televised live in France. It was an ugly, malignant moment.

It did more than “cause offence in some quarters”. It ignited uproar. It gave succour to those who have been making the salute outside synagogues and at holocaust memorials.

It stoked the anger of vigilante gangs who have been attacking places where Dieudonne’s acolytes gather.

If Anelka genuinely thought it was “not political” and “nothing to do with religion”, then he is so spectacularly naive that he should not be allowed out alone. If he understood on any level that he was supporting those who use the salute as a calculatedly anti-Semitic signal, then he should not be allowed on a football pitch.

And, let me add, if a group of fans did it at a match and were caught on CCTV, they would be facing criminal charges.

Yet, to their shame, West Brom instantly adopted football’s default position – deny everything and hope it will all go away. Interim head coach Keith Downing was obviously aware that one of his players had been accused of a racially aggravated offence. Yet Downing’s response was risible bluster.

“I’m aware of it but it has got nothing to do with what is being said,” the sad apologist said, adding: “It’s absolute rubbish really”.

Half of Europe disagreed. And so yesterday, a day late, the club began taking the matter seriously and did what they should have done in the first place.

Sporting and technical director Richard Garlick sat down with Anelka and asked him for a detailed explanation.

A mealy-mouthed statement followed. It offered no apology. It said Anelka had agreed not to do it again. That’s it.

At least West Brom didn’t print T-shirts in support of Anelka, but they did prove that football still doesn’t get it.

The FA have toughened up their procedures to deal with allegations of racism in the professional game. New processes are on their way for the grassroots game as well. And Kick It Out are working out a whole array of ideas and protocols.

But, when it comes down to it, no, football doesn’t get it.

So Anelka can make a gesture popularised by a convicted anti-Semite and his club think at first that complaints are “absolute rubbish”. Then, when cornered, they come up with weasel words and no admission or real acknowledgement of what has occurred.

Then poor Downing, woefully out of his depth, witters on about football. “I will have to have a chat with Nicolas and make sure his mind is clear,” Downing said.

Two paintings stolen by the Nazis have been found hanging inside Germany’s parliament building, according to research provided by an art historian.
The historian’s report, which was given to Germany’s Bild newspaper, shows that the two works included the oil painting, Chancellor Buelow speaking in the Reichstag, by Georg Waltenberger from 1905, and a chalk lithography entitled Street in Koenigsberg by Lovis Corinth.
A German parliament spokesperson refused to confirm the historian’s findings, but agreed that the two pieces of art were indeed “suspicious cases”.
This new discovery is just the latest in a string of embarrassing revelations for the German government involving priceless art stolen during the Nazi period.
Only a month ago it emerged that a massive haul of 1,406 artworks had been found in the apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of a dealer responsible for acquiring art for Hitler.
It was soon revealed that the German authorities had kept the discovery secret for two years.
The Central Council of Jews in Germany has called for the German parliament to act openly and with full transparency in their ongoing investigation into any art originally plundered by the Nazis.
thejc

Among the long list of recommendations...the panel says that public schools in France should be taught in Arabic and African languages rather than in French."It would no longer be up to French immigrants to adopt French culture, but for France to abandon its own culture, language, history and identity to adapt to other people's cultures." — Jean-François Copé, UMP Party.Instead of integration, "parallel societies are forming that continuously distance themselves from each other." — Alain Finkielkraut, author of L'identité malheureuse.

A panel appointed by French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault to review France's integration policies has urged the government to implement a "new form of secularism" that would raise the profile of Islam in public life—in order to improve the integration of Muslim immigrants.
Among a long list of recommendations aimed at "recognizing the richness of multiple identities," the panel says that public schools in France should begin allowing Muslim pupils to wear headscarves in class (clothing that has been outlawed since 2004), and that courses should be taught in Arabic and African languages rather than in French.
The panel also recommends a number of other multicultural changes that would provide greater recognition to the "Arab-oriental dimension" of France's national identity. These include changing street and place names, overhauling the history curriculum taught in schools and creating a special day to honor the contribution of immigrant cultures.
More notably, the panel says that authorities and the media should be prohibited from referring to people's nationality, religion or ethnicity in public, and that the government should create a new law that would make "racial harassment" a punishable offense.
The controversial recommendations are contained in a series of five documents that were discretely posted on the prime minister's official website in November, but only came to public attention on December 12, after an exposé by the French daily newspaper, Le Figaro.
Not surprisingly, the proposals to develop an "inclusive secularism" in France have sparked a firestorm of criticism.
Jean-François Copé, the leader of France's main opposition party, the conservative UMP, said in a statement that the proposals are "explosive and irresponsible" because they replace "the one and indivisible French Republic with a motley assembly of communities, ethnicities and groups of all kinds." According to Copé:

"This report is an attempt to make multiculturalism the new model for France. It would no longer be up to immigrants to adopt French culture, but for France to abandon its own culture, language, history and identity to adapt to other people's cultures...I cannot accept that we build a society where 'responsibilities' are completely replaced by 'rights.' French voters should know that in this report the word 'responsibility' appears only 13 times, while the word 'right' is repeated 440 times."

Copé also accused the government of using the report to deliberately drive voters towards the anti-immigration National Front (FN) party in order to weaken the UMP.
The leader of the FN, Marine Le Pen—who has attained record-breaking popularity due to her criticism of runaway immigration—said the report's recommendations are "a very grave provocation" and implementing them would be tantamount to "a declaration of war on the French people."
The negative reaction to the report has put the ruling Socialists on the defensive.
French President François Hollande—the most unpopular French president on record, with approval ratings well below 30%—has distanced himself from some of the more explosive recommendations contained in the report, which he says do "not at all represent the government's position." Hollande also denies that the ban on Islamic veils in schools will be reversed.
Ayrault, who originally commissioned the report in July 2013 to recommend ways to "get the republican model of integration working again because it has broken down," said there are no plans to drop the headscarf ban. "Just because I receive a report does not make it government policy," he said.
Nevertheless, the report's recommendations are supposed to form the basis of future reforms ostensibly aimed at better integrating Muslim immigrants. These reforms will eventually be put to a vote in the French Parliament sometime during 2014.
In the face of public outcry, however, Ayrault cancelled a public seminar that had been planned to discuss the report's recommendations, which will now be debated in a closed-door meeting tentatively set for January 9, 2014.
Other key Socialists have also distanced themselves from the recommendations, including Thierry Mandon, the spokesman for the Socialist group in the National Assembly, the lower house of the French Parliament.
"I do not envision that we will return to the law on the veil," said Mandon, who compared Hollande and Ayrault to over-eager students who go too far and end up with "extremist" formulas that will lead to the "de-Republicanization" of France.
In any event, the report has opened yet another chapter in the long-running debate over multiculturalism in France, which has the largest Muslim population in Western Europe.
The debate pits the Socialist supporters of multiculturalism in France against the Conservative republican camp, which is concerned about the steady disintegration of French society due to mass immigration, and which is calling for the return to the traditional values ​​of the French Republic.
Opinion polls show that a majority of people in France believe that multiculturalism has gone too far.
According to a poll published by Le Figaro in October 2012, 60% of French people believe that Islam has become "too visible and influential" in France and 43% consider the presence of Muslim immigrants to be a threat to French national identity, compared to just 17% who say it enriches society.
In addition, 68% of people in France blame the problems associated with Muslim integration on immigrants who refuse to integrate, and 52% blame it on cultural differences. The poll also shows a growing resistance to the symbols of Islam. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of French people say they are opposed to Muslim women wearing the veil or Islamic headscarves in public, and only 18% say they support the building of new mosques in France.
France has a long tradition of secularism in public institutions, especially in public schools where the absence of religion has long been considered essential to the country's ideals of equality and freedom of conscience.
In September 2013, the government introduced a "secularism charter" for schools. The document—which is to appear in a prominent location in all of the 55,000 public schools in France—would serve to remind students and teachers of a list of secular principles underpinning the separation of mosque and state.
Although the initiative has enjoyed a generally positive reception, many observers say they doubt Hollande has the political will actually to enforce secular principles in French schools, with or without a charter.
This skepticism stems from the circumstance that Muslim children constitute an increasingly large proportion of the 10 million students in the French public school system—and because Muslim parents make up an increasingly important voting bloc in French politics. Muslims, in fact, cast the deciding vote that thrust Hollande into the Elysée Palace in May 2012.
With major municipal elections in France coming up in March 2014 and European parliamentary ballots in May, speculation is rife that the flailing Hollande is seeking to leverage the debate over multiculturalism to further endear himself to Muslim voters.
But the French philosopher and essayist Alain Finkielkraut says multiculturalism and runway Muslim immigration are responsible for the destruction of French national identity.
In a politically incorrect interview with the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel on December 6 to discuss his latest book, "L'identité malheureuse" [The Unhappy Identity], Finkielkraut says European elites have consistently misrepresented multiculturalism as the model for the future. Instead, he says, "mistrust prevails, communitarianism is rampant—parallel societies are forming that continuously distance themselves from each other."
According to Finkielkraut:

"Immigration used to go hand-in-hand with integration into French culture. That was the rule of the game. Many of the new arrivals no longer want to play by that rule. If the immigrants are in the majority in their neighborhoods, how can we integrate them? … Many Muslims in Europe are re-Islamizing themselves. … The left does not want to accept that there is a clash of civilizations."

Finkielkraut sums it up: "I am of the opinion that our generation's task is not to recreate the world, but to prevent its decline. … I become sad and feel a growing sense of anxiety. Optimism would seem a bit ridiculous these days. I wish the politicians were able to speak the truth and look reality in the face. Then, I believe, France would be capable of a true awakening—of contemplating a policy of civilization."gatestoneinstitute

One of the extremist killers of Lee Rigby has revealed that he was inspired to convert to Islam by a hardline preacher who advocates beating women and killing gays.
After he was convicted of murder this month, Michael Adebowale wrote in a letter that the radical sermons of Khalid Yasin had taught him ‘the purpose of life’.
He said that he had converted to Islam in 2009 after investigating the religion and listening to a sermon by Yasin.
‘I have always been a fairly spiritual person in terms of belief in the unseen, and I suppose because most of my friends at that time were Muslims,’ Adebowale wrote.
‘So the combination of the two factors caused me to start reading up and learning more about Islam.
‘The more I learned the more interested I became, which led to me listening to a lecture by Sheikh Khalid Yasin – you may have heard of him, he is based in the U.S.
‘The title of this lecture is called “What is the Purpose of Life?” After hearing this I had to conclude that the purpose of life is to acknowledge and worship the creator.’
Adebowale’s mother Juliet Obasuyi told the Mail this month: ‘I lost my son. He’s not dead, he’s still alive, but I lost him to the Jihad people.’

The Jihad People are the Islamic People. Yasin, like Adebowale, is a black convert to Islam.
If Khalid Yasin did this much damage over the internet in another country, think about how much damage the Muslim Students Association is doing by arranging for him to our American campuses.frontpagemag

Islamic jihadists are murdering with impunity in Volgograd. But here in
Australia our trusted ABC ‘experts’ tell us that its got ‘nothing to do with
Islam’, its all about gas and oil and… muselmanic grievances. But it could also
be “something completely different” (like what?) from the Islamic
‘separatist movement’sheikyermami

There's new details emerging about a possible threat to Hillary Clinton's presidential run in 2016. The Egyptian Attorney General, Hisham Barakat, alleges that Clinton collaborated with the Muslim Brotherhood.
World Net Daily (WND) reports that Clinton has been named in a criminal complaint with Naglaa Mahmoud, the wife of ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, to incite domestic insurrections in Egypt.
The charges say that Clinton and Mahmoud conspired to topple Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. He's the Egyptian general who has been commander in chief of the Egyptian armed forces, and the minister of defense, since Aug. 12, 2012.
Researcher Walid Shoebat reported on his blog that criminal charges have indeed been filed against Clinton and Morsi's wife. Shoebat speaks fluent Arabic and is a former Palestinian Liberation Organization operative. He says the news of the charges were reported in Arabic, by credible sources, which he translated.
WND says, "Shoebat translated the transcript from an Egyptian Mehwar TV channel news video in which television reporter Nasr Qaffas explains on camera details of an interview Turkey’s Anatolia news agency conducted with Naglaa Mahmoud."
The transcripts from the Mehwar TV news video is said to include comments by Naglaa Mahmoud which implicate Huma Abedin, the wife of former Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner. She was also the former Hillary Clinton chief of staff. According to WND, Abedin has close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
According to Anatolia Press, Mahmoud said,

I have between my fingers, a treasure trove of secrets from the White House and Mrs. Clinton fears my wrath. I will not speak about Huma Abedin.

Mahmoud claims that she and her husband became friends with the Clintons in the 1980s and were recruited by them. (She didn't clarify what work she and her husband were recruited to do.) According to her Clinton had official and unofficial dealings with Mahmoud. She also said that Hillary sought out the help of the Muslim Sisterhood "in dealing with problems in the Middle East.
Naglaa Mahmoud also claimed Hillary Clinton "is looking for the support of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood," when she runs for president in 2016. Mahmoud also stated that “Hillary depends on us tremendously to help her succeed in the coming presidential elections, just as we helped Barack Obama win twice.”
According to the WND report, a key revelation in this report is the friendship between the Clintons, Morsi and his wife. Mahmoud is one of 63 leaders of the Muslim Sisterhood and is said to be a colleague of Saleha Abedin, the mother of Huma.
We previously reported on Nov. President Obama had criminal terrorism charges filed against him and his brother Malik. The trial of the Muslim Brotherhood is set to begin in Jan. 2014.
Obama is likely to be a subject in Morsi's criminal trial. The report alleges that Obama "provided direct financial support to MB political operatives, through the U.S. Embassy, with the full knowledge and complicity of the Morsi government."
Clinton makes the second highest ranking U.S. official to be indicted for criminal activities involving the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.examiner

A picture posted by the victim on Twitter showing bruising on her face. Photo: Screenshot.

Supporters of Turkey’s Islamist Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, shouted “are you Jewish” as they attacked a woman late last week as she was walking in the streets of Istanbul, Turkey’s center-left Cumhuriyet daily reported on Monday.
The group of attackers, who numbered 15-20 according to the victim, were leaving a rally hosted by Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) on Friday night. The event, which was held outside Istanbul’s airport, was hosted in honor of Ergodan who was returning home from an international trip.
The thugs then encountered the young woman, who is only identified by the paper by her initials E.Y., as she was leaving an anti corruption protest at Istanbul’s Taksim Square. They then began to shout “are you Jewish” as they attacked her physically, the paper reported.
The incident happened around 9 pm on December 27th near a Metro Bus station in the Sirinevler district of Istanbul, according to the report.
The victim said that she left the protest to go back home because of tear gas that was being used by the Turkish police.
“I was heading home and crossing the bridge and I was talking on the phone with my friend and while I was on the phone I heard some people eavesdropping on my conversation,” she said. “They were holding AKP flags and they started shouting loudly ‘are you Jewish’ and then they attacked me. Right after the incident I started running away from the area towards my home.”
E.Y. posted pictures on Twitter which show bruises on her face and body.
Erdogan and his allies have blamed “international groups” for the recent corruption scandal that is now rocking the country.algemeiner

A former paramedic who converted to Islam and joined a militant cell could be the Volgograd train station suicide bomber according to investigators.
The new prime suspect has been identified as Pavel Pechyonkin, and not 26-year-old woman Oksana Aslanova as was previously believed.
Police now think that Pechonkin, who left to join Dagestani militants in 2011, carried out the devastating attack which killed 17 people on Sunday.
The Muslim convert posted a video on Youtube saying that he was following God's will, that he would not turn back and that he working to earn a place in heaven.
His video was in response to a message from his parents Nikolai and Fanaziya, begging him not to use violence and described their lives as 'hell' without him.
A medical school graduate, his father Nikolai spoke about his conversion: 'My son changed for the better. He stopped arguing with me, did not drink, went to the mosque. I bought him Halal meat.'
Then following a visit to Moscow, he vanished six months ago.
His parents heard he had gone 'in the forest' with rebels and made an internet appeal for him to return.
'Pasha, come back, let your hands be on blood from wounds, injuries, and not from kills, you're a doctor,' said his father.
He replied about his parents' video appeal: 'It was sad to see your tears, very sad. I didn't even want to watch. I thought it would weaken me. I came here so Allah would be pleased with me, to earn my way to paradise.'
His parents travelled to Dagestan, hoping to find their son and rescue him from the militants they believe indoctrinated him.
The Moscow Times reported that his mother said: 'Imagine that somebody were to kill your parents, how would that make you feel? Why are you turning children into orphans?'
Pechyonkin told his parents that he had then decided he would not be swayed.
He said: 'I didn't want to watch your appeal, I thought that it would weaken me, that it would make me softer.'
He added: 'Why should we follow those Christian commandments, when Allah, may he be glorified, urges us to fight those kafirs [unbelievers].
'Why shouldn't we leave their children orphaned?'
It is believed that investigators will take DNA from Pechyonkin's father to see if it is a match to tissue found at the scene.
17 people are known to have died in the blast, with more than 50 left injured.
Witness Alexander Koblyakov said: ‘People were lying on the ground, screaming and asking for help. I helped carry out a police officer whose head and face were covered in blood. He couldn’t speak.’
Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for Russia’s Investigative Committee, said: ‘A suicide bomber who was approaching a metal detector saw a law enforcement official and, after growing nervous, set off an explosive device.’
More than 40 people were reported as injured and the death toll could rise, according to Russian officials.
The attacker was originally named as Oksana Aslanova, who had twice married separatist Muslim gang leaders from the troubled Caucasus region, sources said.
She had been on Russia’s wanted list for 18 months before the attack which used 16lb of TNT, the deadliest in Russia for three years.
The bomb was the equivalent to at least 10kg of TNT, said to Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin, and was stuffed with metal shrapnel.
President Vladimir Putin has reportedly instructed special flights to be laid on to airlift the injured to Moscow clinics if necessary.
Metal detectors have been mandatory in railway stations and airports throughout Russia since a suicide bomber killed 37 people at Domodedovo airport in 2011.
Footage from a CCTV camera facing the station showed the moment the bomb went off, with a bright orange flash emerging from inside the station followed by billowing smoke.
'Someone tried to get inside the train station but was not allowed in,' an unidentified law enforcement official told Vysota 102, a local news agency. 'After that an explosion went off.'
Among the dead was a police officer checking people entering the train station and a child, The Moscow Times reports.
Local media reports claim taxi drivers queuing for customers outside the station were the first respondents to the emergency.
Volgograd mayor, Irina Guseva said the drivers were able to save lives by taking injured victims to hospital before ambulances arrived at the scene.
The attack comes months after Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov called for new attacks against civilian targets in Russia, including the 2014 Games which will take place in Sochi.More...

By Norman RogersSolar electricity is growing, promoted, and most importantly, heavily subsidized. The promoters of solar electricity claim that it is close to being competitive with conventional sources of electricity. That is a fantasy.Solar electricity is expensive and impractical. If it weren't for government subsidies, some explicit and some disguised, the solar industry would collapse. The many claims of competitiveness are always based on ignoring subsidies provided to politically correct renewable power, ignoring the costs associated with unreliability, and ignoring the cost of backup fossil fuel plants.An example of a hidden subsidy is the California Renewable Portfolio Standard that mandates utilities to obtain 33% of their energy from so-called renewable sources by 2020. This mandate forces utilities to contract for expensive sources of energy, such as solar. The cost is passed on to the utility customers with the connivance of the government. Although the motivation behind the California scheme is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, politically incorrect sources of CO2-free electricity, such as nuclear and large-scale hydroelectric, can't be counted as renewable.People whose knowledge of electricity production ends at their wall outlet are dictating national energy policy. Magical thinking by hopelessly ignorant political activists permeates the alternative energy universe.How much does electricity from conventional sources cost? If I look at my ComEd (Chicago) bill, the charge for electricity is about 5 cents per kilowatt-hour (KWH). Additional charges for delivering the electricity and various taxes increase the total to about 10 cents per KWH. This is electricity mainly from coal, nuclear, and natural gas. Electricity is available at the plant gate in much of the U.S. for about 5 cents per KWH.Figuring out how much solar electricity costs is tricky. Most of the cost is the capital cost of building the plant; in favorable situations, a solar plant costs 15 times more than a fossil fuel plant per KWH generated. How one assigns this initial capital cost to the electricity generated over the life of the plant depends on economic assumptions involving interest rates. The amount of sunshine can vary by as much as two to one, if you compare sunny Arizona locations with cloudy European ones. Photovoltaic technology, using electricity-generating panels, is the currently favored technology. An alternative technology is thermal solar or plants that use reflectors to concentrate sunlight to generate high-pressure steam, or other high-pressure gas, to operate turbines that drive generators. The estimates in this article refer to recently constructed photovoltaic plants.The cost of solar electricity at the plant gate is about 25 cents per KWH, or about 5 times more than conventional electricity. It may be 50 cents per KWH in cloudy northern areas.It is true that the cost of solar panels has greatly decreased in recent years. This decrease has to do with technological improvements and overbuilding of capacity in the Chinese panel manufacturing industry. However, even if the panels cost nothing, solar electricity would not be remotely competitive. The panels are only part of the cost. One also has to pay for the land, the mounting systems for the panels, and other infrastructure.The cost of a solar electricity plant is usually quoted as so many dollars per watt. For example, many large-scale plants cost about $4 per watt to build. The watts in this case refer to the maximum amount of electricity the plant can produce when the sun shines squarely on the panels, or, more technically, the number of watts that can be generated when the panels are illuminated with sunlight with an energy content of 1,000 watts per square meter (approximately the energy flux of full sunlight). In the best locations, a solar plant with fixed panels can generate the equivalent of full power 25% of the time. That is called the utilization factor.As an example, the Agua Caliente solar plant in Arizona, when completed in 2014, will be rated at 397 million watts and will cost $1.8 billion. This works out to $4.53 per watt of capacity. The cost of generating electricity from this plant has two components: the capital cost of building the plant spread out over the 25-year life of the plant and the annual maintenance cost for such things as periodically washing the solar panels that cover 4 square miles of land. When a utility invests in a generating plant, it needs a rate of return on its investment great enough to stay in business. It must pay dividends attract capital, maintain a good credit rating, and pay substantial taxes. Roughly an 8% return on a generating plant investment is needed to maintain the business. This means that if $1.8 billion is invested, the annual capital cost is similar to the payments on a 25-year mortgage at 8% interest. This is a higher interest rate than one might pay on a home mortgage due to taxes and the need to attract risk capital. The utility might finance half the cost at 4% or 5% and finance the other half with equity capital, for which a return of 10% or 12% is necessary. The budget for the Agua Caliente plant would look roughly like this:

This is the price at the plant gate, assuming that all the electricity generated is purchased for 25 years. The required price of 22 cents per KWH compares unfavorably with the 5 cents per KWH that is widely available in the U.S. But this is only half of the story. The price of 22 cents per KWH for a plant in sunny Arizona is actually misleadingly low.Solar electricity is generated when the sun is up and the sky is clear. But electricity is needed during the night and on cloudy days. So a solar electricity plant must be accompanied by a backup plant. A combined-cycle natural gas plant can be purchased at a capital cost of approximately $1,000 per kilowatt of output capability. Depending on the percent utilization, electricity can be generated in the range of 4 cents to 6 cents per KWH. The natural gas fuel at current prices costs about 3 cents per KWH. Capital costs distributed over the 30-year life of the plant are in the range of 1-3 cents per KWH depending on percent utilization. The percent utilization can be has high as 90%.The bottom line is that the only saving from a solar electricity plant is the fuel not burned when the solar is working. Most likely, the fuel is natural gas. But the maintenance of the solar plant costs about the same per KWH as the fuel for a natural gas plant. It most cases, it probably makes sense to bulldoze a solar plant and use the backup natural gas plant.Believers in global warming alarmism will probably claim that it is worth paying 5 times more for electricity in order to reduce CO2 emissions. But if they are really concerned about CO2, the obvious solution is CO2-free nuclear power, which is far cheaper and more practical than solar.Wind power is the other renewable energy. The capital cost of building wind farms is less than solar, and the utilization factor may be higher in favorable locations. But, at best, wind energy costs 2-3 times more per KWH than conventional energy. There are doubts about the useful life of wind turbines and many population centers have no suitable wind energy sites near enough to economically transport the power.Solar energy and wind energy are nothing but a scam promoted by ideological fanatics in environmental organizations and allied special interests. We all pay for the scam with our taxes and with our electric bills.

To no one’s surprise the entire Turkish government has been caught with its hand in the country’s pocket. And even less surprising, the Erdogan regime is blaming absolutely everyone and everything except themselves.
1. The United States – this is an easy one. Turkey is xenophobic and the AKP’s base tends to be hard core Islamic and really loathes America. Not that anyone in Turkey really likes America. The strategy worked in Egypt, so perversely Morsi’s biggest ally is now using it.
2. Israel – This one is barely worth mentioning. If a stray pigeon flies across the border, it’s probably an Israeli spy.
3. The interest rate lobby – Some combination of a vast Jewish conspiracy, America and everyone who has a big chunk of the huge debt that Erdogan ran up funding his “economic miracle”.
4. Telekinesis - Erdogan’s chief adviser blamed telekinetic assassins. Possibly Zionist telekinetic assassins.
5. The Deep State- With most of the Turkish military in prison, this should have been a bit passe, but European leftists go wild for it. Tell them the Deep State is behind it and they’ll give Erdogan their unlimited backing.
6. The Gulen Movement – The Gulen movement is actually behind it, but everyone inside Turkey is being careful about not blaming them too loudly. That’s smart considering the sheer amount of blackmail material they have on everyone. Enough perhaps to finish bringing down Erdogan.
7. The police – The cops clearly are to blame. That’s why Erdogan is purging them and banning the media from police stations.
8. Alcoholics – This one plays well with Erdogan’s base. The non-drunk part. Erdogan was pushing to sideline liquor in Turkey. Now the drinkers have struck back.
9. Mysterious foreign powers – They’re powerful, mysterious and deliberately vague. How you can go wrong with that?
10. A vast Ameri-Zionist conspiracy of telekinetic interest lobbies run by the Deep State and the alcoholic police – That’s the one Erdogan will eventually go with.frontpagemag

European cartoonists from Norway, Germany, and France landed the seventh slot for their depictions of Israel and Jews. Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center, told The Post, “It is especially galling and outrageous that in the midst of all this that two German newspapers would publish cartoons that consciously or otherwise, deploy deep-rooted European anti-Semitic imagery—of the Jew as poisoner. Those images do the poisoning and also validate toxic attitude towards Israel and the Jewish people."
The Center wrote, “The debates in Germany over P5+1 nuclear negotiations with Iran and the continued Israeli-Palestinian conflict were marred by cartoons in two different newspapers (The Badische Zeitung and the Stuttgarter Zeitung) depicting Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu poisoning peace talks. This theme traces back to an insidious medieval canard. This time it’s not the drinking water that is being poisoned, but rather any hopes for peace.”
Henryk M. Broder, a leading German author and expert on new forms of anti-Semitism, praised the list for classifying the Badische Zeitung cartoon as anti-Semitic. He told The Post that “it hit the nail on the head.”
The German-Israel friendship society in Freiburg, where the Badische Zeitung is published, wrote in a statement to The Post, “In view of this ranking we would appreciate if the editorial team of the Badische Zeitung could reconsider their statement about the cartoon. We hope that in future the Badische Zeitung will exercise more care when it comes to the release of anti-Semitic depictions. In this context we would like to mention that anti-Semitism can also be disguised as anti-Zionism.”

Fourth on the list were political and church groups, as well as Pink Floyd’s co-founder Roger Waters. Waters was listed for slandering “Israel as an apartheid state,[he] compares it to Nazi Germany and denies that the Iranian regime poses any threat to the Jewish State.”jpost

Amid a public debate in France over an allegedly anti-Semitic gesture, French media have reproduced a photo of a man performing it outside the Toulouse school where four Jews were murdered.
The photo, which was published Monday on the website of the France 3 broadcaster, shows a man wearing a shirt featuring a portrait of Yasser Arafat in front of the Ohr Torah school.
The man, whose face was digitally obscured, is holding his left palm outstretched over his right shoulder – a gesture known as quenelle, which was invented by the anti-Semitic comedian Dieudonne M’balla M’balla.
Jewish groups say that Dieudonne, who has multiple convictions for inciting racial hatred against Jews, designed the quenlle to emulate the Nazi salute without violating France’s laws against displaying Nazi symbols to cause offense.
The picture taken outside Ohr Torah is not dated but was taken after the Muslim extremist Mohammed Merah last year killed three children and a rabbi. The institution changed its name since from Otzar Hatorah.
The photo was published a day after photos surfaced of NBA star Tony Parker, who was born in Belgium and is French by nationality, performing the salute earlier this year standing next to Dieudonne backstage at a theater in France. Photos of the salute were published in the French media.
The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center reportedly has called on Parker, who plays point guard for the San Antonio Spurs, to apologize for performing the salute.
“As a leading sports figure on both sides of the Atlantic, Parker has a special moral obligation to disassociate himself from a gesture that the government of France has identified as anti-Semitic,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center, told the Algemeiner news website.
Reports of the Parker salute came a day after soccer player Nicolas Anelka, a French national playing for Britain’s West Bromwich Albion soccer team, was roundly condemned for performing the salute during a match on Saturday.
Anelka defended himself on Sunday, saying that he saw a photo of President Obama performing the quenelle with rapper Jay Z and singer Beyonce. They were, in fact, performing a hip hop move in which the hand brushes off the shoulder.
Britain’s Football Association has launched an investigation of the Anelka incident.
France’s interior minister, Manuel Valls, declared that his ministry would look into banning all public performances by Dieudonne, the inventor of the quenelle.
Dieudonne has been convicted several times for inciting racial hatred against Jews in films, shows and articles.
jta

Israel has taken great pride in a recent BBC report regarding the Jewish state’s genuine care for its enemies. The BBC is often seen as biased against Israel, but the report in question had nothing but good things to say about Israel over its selfless care for victims of the ongoing civil war in Syria, a nation still officially at war with Israel.
BBC Middle East correspondent Kevin Connolly visited Ziv Hospital in the northern Israel town of Safed and brought back a story of Syrians under fire whose lives were literally saved by their worst enemy.
Connolly interviewed a Syrian mother giving birth to her baby at the Israeli hospital after the clinic in her own village turned her away due to its inability to handle her case amidst the chaos of war. The child “will one day have quite a story to tell. That is, if his parents ever decide to tell him,” noted Connolly. The woman was already in labor when she was turned away from her local clinic. “Her worried husband knew that it was possible to get her treated in Israel - and so the couple began a dangerous race to the frontier in a country at war and a desperate race against time,” the reporter continued.
Like many before them, the anxious couple came to a point near the Israel-Syria border where they knew Israeli military patrols would see them. Shortly after, an Israeli military ambulance picked up the woman and transferred her on time to Ziv Hospital.
Connolly pointed out that the new mother “was the 177th person to make the journey to the emergency room in what has become one of the most extraordinary subplots of Syria’s agonizing civil war.”
The astonished correspondent explained that the phenomenon has become so common-place that an “informal system of patient transfer has become so well-established that some patients have even arrived with letters of referral written by doctors in Syria for their Israeli counterparts.”
The director of Ziv Hospital, Dr. Oscar Embon, told the BBC that he hoped the experience of the Syrian patients would be different from what they had been raised to believe about Israel. “Most of them express their gratitude and their wish for peace between the two countries,” said Embon.
Of course, decades of indoctrination are hard to reverse in just a few short days or weeks. Embon said he doesn’t “expect [the Syrian patients] to become lovers of Israel and ambassadors for what we do here, but in the interim I expect they will reflect on what was their experience here and that they will reflect differently on what the regime tells them about Israelis and Syrians being enemies.”
Connolly went on to write about the compelling human dramas taking place in the hospital.
“Most of the patients…won’t talk about what they have been through - they are too frightened about what would happen to them back in Syria if it emerged they had been to Israel,” he noted.
One person who was ready to talk was an Israeli Arab social worker who identified himself as Faris, whose job it was to calm the disoriented Syrian visitors, many of whom come to only to find themselves being treated in an enemy state they have been taught is a bloodthirsty foe to all Arabs.
Faris’ job is perhaps the most difficult of all at Ziv Hospital. In addition to having to explain a complicated situation, he also must eventually say goodbye to people with whom he has formed a strong bond, knowing that he will never see them again.
“When people come here for two months,” Faris told Connolly, “a relationship starts between you and them and becomes stronger. Then they go home and the sad thing is you can’t be in contact with them because their villages are ‘enemy’ villages.”
As word of the outstanding and unexpected medical care in Israel spreads, Connolly is certain that more and more Syrians will make their way to the border. Especially as Syrians gradually learn that the Jews of Israel mean them no harm.
israeltoday

By Jonathan F. KeilerThe so-called anti-Zionist Left long ago descended into outright anti-Semitism. So it is only matter of time before that debasement becomes complete and Left goes all in on the most pernicious modern anti-Semitic trope of all -- Holocaust denial. There have long been Left-wing Holocaust deniers, willing to make common cause with their fellow nut-jobs on the extreme Right. It's no great insight to realize the extremes of either political wing are not far apart. Indeed, Nazism itself is the virtual embodiment of mixed Left-Right extremism. But until to now, Holocaust denial has been a facet of the most extreme Leftists, denizens of the wackiest web forums and outliers among their fellow travelers -- which is not to say that they have been chastised by the Left. Extreme leftists might not be deniers themselves, but will associate with deniers who are also, of course, unremitting anti-Zionists. But in general, even loopy older malcontents like Ward Churchill don't question the Holocaust and are willing to attack the deniers. In the past at least, left-wing academics have disputed that you can be a leftist and a Holocaust denier at the same time. Not for long.Israel remains an obsession for the modern Left, and 21st-century Leftists will let nothing stand in the way of delegitimizing the Jewish state, which stands for everything they oppose -- individual freedom, religious rights, free markets, economic success, military excellence, and most of all, Westernization. In the effort to delegitimize Israel, the Left has had some successes, some failures, and some efforts that remain uncertain, such as the BDS movement, which engenders (discouraging for the Left) pushbacks with each "achievement."Perhaps the most notable success of the effort to delegitimize Israel is the widespread acceptance of the Leftist narrative that Israel was a creation of the Holocaust. No less an authority than President Obama declaimed this idea, centering Israeli legitimacy on the Holocaust as well as equating the plight of Palestinian Arabs with those of Jews during the Holocaust. In making this odious comparison in his famous Cairo address, Obama also staked out the standard position of the Left, asserting that denying the "fact" of the Holocaust is "baseless," "ignorant" and "hateful." But Obama's rejection of Holocaust denial was pro-forma -- necessary to counterbalance to his rhetorical (and morally and historically offensive) equivalency between the Holocaust and the so-called Palestinian nakba. Today if you ask an average American whether Israel was founded as a result of the Holocaust, they would most likely say yes. I know my own Advanced Placement World History classes, students almost always posit the Holocaust as the founding basis of Israel, because this is what they have been told by teachers for ten years. The problem for the Left is that despite the widespread acceptance of this false narrative, it does nothing to change the average American's mostly positive view of the Jewish state. Americans also learn in school, and through popular culture, about the singularly evil nature of the Holocaust. If as a result of this catastrophe a refuge for the Jews was founded in their biblical homeland, carved out of about 2% of the Arab-Muslim Middle East -- well, so what? And that feeling is likely reinforced every day Americans watch Arabs slaughter each other in places like Aleppo, Cairo, and Baghdad. But what if even the Holocaust "narrative" is false? What if the narrative of the Holocaust as the very basis for the Jewish state is itself a scam, perpetrated by evil Zionists in order to drive poor indigenous Palestinian Arabs from their homes? Then even your average decent, even-keeled, right-minded American might come to see Israel as the evil transgressor.Perhaps the first notable step has now been taken in that direction by Haaretz, a mainstream Leftist newspaper, (in Israel no less) with the recent publication of an article by somebody called Eli Gat, described as a Holocaust survivor, that calls the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 a myth. Discussing Gat's article in Commentary, Eugene Kontorovich sees it as an attempt to drive a wedge into perhaps the last remaining Jewish consensus -- that the Holocaust produced Jewish victims and heroes -- as a way to undermine what's left of Jewish unity when it comes to Israel. No argument there, but it is likely only a first step what will be a continuing efforts to delegitimize the Holocaust itself, as a way to destroy Israel. The Commentary piece, while decrying the article's intent (and Haaretz's by publishing it) gives the article's factual assertions far too much credit, disputing the interpretation of actions in the ghetto, rather than the factual basis of the author's claims. This is precisely the kind of opening that will be exploited by future Leftist deniers of the Holocaust. In the Haaretz piece, Gat implies that the small groups of starving, ill-armed fighters that led the uprising condemned the remaining 50,000 people in the ghetto to death, because the Germans, in reaction to the uprising, razed the ghetto. Incredibly, he claims that there was "something of a change in the German policy toward the Jews" in the beginning of 1943, and appears to believe that Jews who worked in ghetto factories for the German arms industry would have continued to do so but for the uprising. The contingencies of history are alive with possibilities, but these are the fodder of novelists, not historians. Gat's claim is simply untrue.In January 1942, three months before the actual uprising in April, the Germans attempted to deport 10,000 of the 50,000 remaining Jews in the ghetto, but were met with scattered resistance. After that, the SS agreed to transport some number of Jewish factory workers and their families to the Lublin district, where they supposedly would be spared in exchange for their labor. However, the workers by and large refused to go, having learned by then that the Lublin district, administered by the notorious mass murderer SS General Otto Globocnik, housed the death factories of Sobibor, Treblinka, and Belzec. The workers rightly figured that even if the Nazis spared them for a few months, they, and certainly their families, would eventually be gassed. Indeed, there is no evidence that the few foremen and workers who took the Nazis up on this offer survived. A couple months later in the spring of 1943, Heinrich Himmler tasked SS General Jurgen Stroop with annihilating the ghetto. There was no "option" to keep the factories running. The SS planned to remove some workers if possible, but Stroop was happy to kill every Jew in place if he could. The uprising occurred only after the Germans entered the ghetto, the fate of the Jews there already sealed. Those who fought did not decide the fate of those who merely hid -- which was the main form of resistance. The Nazis intended to kill or deport every Jew in the ghetto, with or without an uprising.Gat also tries to lessen the importance and heroism of the ghetto fighters by setting up and destroying straw men, claiming for instance that early accounts of the uprising told of hundreds of German dead or widespread fighting that lasted weeks. But outside the commonly heated recollections of combat veterans, or of movie or television treatments that sometimes show the fighting as more "conventional" than it was, this claim is also untrue. And besides, so what if the heroism of a few poorly armed fighters standing against impossible odds is sometimes exaggerated by participants -- when is it not? World War II combat pilots, the fittest, best fed and best rested of combatants, routinely overestimated enemy losses and their own accomplishments. Did this turn their achievements into myths? In the case of the ghetto, where the best fighter was hungry, untrained, and armed with a decrepit pistol, a few bullets and a homemade grenade, killing or wounding even a single SS man was a significant feat. Besides, even by SS General Stroop's own account, resistance in the ghetto lasted for nearly four weeks, and the Germans were still employing heavy artillery and tanks against ghetto fighters more than a week into the conflict. This attack on the veracity of Jewish fighting accounts will only be the beginning. Ultimately, the accounts of Jewish victims, including those of more than a million Jewish children, will come under attack as well. By the Left's own twisted account of Zionist triumphs, eliminating the Holocaust is ultimately the only way to finally and firmly undermine and destroy Israel's legitimacy. This is likely only the start of that effort.

The security barrier that saves lives is perverted into an unjust barrier with no mention of what happened to Israelis before it was put in place.By Giulio Meotti

St. James’s Church, in Piccadilly, London, decided to celebrate Christmas by erecting, outside its church, a monumental replica of the Israeli security barrier .
Through the association of Palestinian Arabs with Jesus’ story, St. James Church invokes classical anti-Semitic tropes.
The replica is a very powerful propaganda tool, since the Jews fill the role of oppressors and serve as foils to the "persecuted" Palestinian Arabs with whom God stands in solidarity.
This week, Mahmoud Abbas called Jesus “a Palestinian” in front of Lady Ashton, the EU foreign minister, who travelled to Bethlehem to participate in the Christmas’ mass. She didn’t raise any objection to the nonsensical falsehood.
Now, in the Yuletide season, In front of a world famous London cathedral, Zionism is presented as a modern form of faithlessness, oppression and rejection of God. Jews are indicted for disobedience to God and the Biblical tradition, no less.
There are many examples of this kind of Christian event used to demonize the Jews such as the hijacking of Christmas carols, cards, and messages. Don Hinchey’s Christian liturgy “O Little Town of Bethlehem”, a classic of Christian pro-Palestinian tools, is reminiscent of earlier anti-Jewish literature in its claims that modern Jews have now burned down the “messiah’s home”.
Among the most famous skewed Christmas cards there is one of Israeli soldiers conducting a body search of Joseph, and a pregnant Mary on a donkey, blocked on their way to Bethlehem.
Christianity claims to be “the first religion which defeated death”. But by displaying such anti-Semitic images, the Western churches are promoting a glorification of death. They transfigure Arab Palestinian terrorism into a Christ-like image.
But above all, they sanction and condone the assassination of Jews. Again. Why have British Christian institutions not denounced the obscenity of such a display taking place in a house of worship that is an official constituent of the Church of England?
St. James’ clerics could have added a line from Matthew’s Gospel, where the worst anti-Jewish sentence ever written is placed into the mouths of the Jews themselves: “His blood will be on our children”.
And that of many innocent Jews, among them children, has been spilled this year.israelnationalnews

In May, new census data published by the British government showed that Islam is set to become the dominant religion in Britain within the next generation.On being informed that the girl did not want to get married, Mohammed Shahid Akhtar, Imam of Birmingham's Central Jamia Masjid Ghamkol Sharif Mosque, said, "She's 14. By Sharia, grace of Allah, she's legal to get married."

The Muslim population of Britain topped 3.3 million by the end of 2013 to become around 5.2% of the overall population of 63 million, according to figures extrapolated from a recent study on the growth of the Muslim population in Europe.
At the same time, opinion surveys consistently show that voters in Britain view Islam and the question of Muslim immigration as a top-ranked public concern. The British public, it seems, is increasingly worried about the establishment of a parallel Muslim society there.
But government efforts to push back against the Islamization of Britain have been halting and half-hearted.
What follows is a chronological review of some of the main stories involving the rise of Islam in Britain during 2013.
In January, Muslim gangs were filmed loitering on streets in London and demanding that passersby conform to Islamic Sharia law. In a series of videos, the self-proclaimed vigilantes—who call themselves Muslim London Patrol—are seen abusing non-Muslim pedestrians and repeatedly shouting "this is a Muslim area."
One video records the men shouting: "Allah is the greatest! Islam is here, whether you like it or not. We are here! We are here! What we need is Islam! What we need is Sharia!"
The video continues: "We are the Muslim Patrol. We are in north London, we are in south London, in east London and west London. We command good and forbid evil. Islam is here in London. [Prime Minister] David Cameron, Mr. Police Officer, whether you like it or not, we will command good and forbid evil. You will never get us. You can go to hell! This is not a Christian country. To hell with Christianity. Isa [Jesus] was a messenger of Allah. Muslim Patrol will never die. Allah is great! Allah is great! We are coming!"
In a January 23 interview with the online newspaper International Business Times, Anjem Choudary, a radical preacher who has long called for Sharia law to be implemented in Britain and other European countries, defended the gang, saying: "This is a wake-up call for society to ask, 'where are we headed?' There is a clash between Islam and liberal democracy in hotspot areas of London."
Choudary has previously led a campaign, known as the Islamic Emirates Project, to turn twelve British cities—including what he calls "Londonistan"—into independent Islamic states. The so-called Islamic Emirates would function as autonomous enclaves, ruled by Sharia law and governed entirely outside British jurisprudence.
In February, Choudary was filmed urging his followers to quit their jobs and claim unemployment benefits so they have more time to plan holy war against non-Muslims.
Excerpts of the speech, published by the London-based newspaper The Sun on February 17, drew renewed attention to the growing problem of Muslims in Britain and elsewhere who are exploiting European welfare systems.
In the video, Choudary is recorded as saying that Muslims are justified in taking money from non-Muslims, whom he mocks for working in nine-to-five jobs their whole lives. He says: "You find people are busy working the whole of their life. They wake up at 7 o'clock. They go to work at 9 o'clock. They work for eight, nine hours a day. They come home at 7 o'clock, watch EastEnders [a British soap opera], sleep, and they do that for 40 years of their life. That is called slavery. ... What kind of life is that? That is the life of the kuffar [a non-Muslim]."
Choudary urges fellow Muslims to learn from revered figures in Islamic history who only worked one or two days a year. "The rest of the year they were busy with jihad [holy war] and things like that," he says. "People will say, 'Ah, but you are not working.' But the normal situation is for you to take money from the kuffar. So we take Jihad Seeker's Allowance."
Also in February, a judge in London acquitted two brothers from Pakistan who swapped houses in an effort to defraud British taxpayers out of £315,000 ($520,000). The Pakistani couples, who have 11 children between them, submitted bogus tenancy agreements for 16 years so that the women could pretend to be tenants and claim housing benefits.
Judge Neil Sanders ruled: "The two men dishonestly represented through their wives to the London Borough of Redbridge that this was a genuine rental arrangement." Nevertheless, Sanders allowed the men to walk free. "You have both worked hard in terms of making a life for yourselves and in many ways the greatest punishment is the loss of your good name," Sanders said.
In March, the London-based newspaper The Independent reported that at least 100 British Muslims are currently active as jihadists fighting in Syria, which has replaced Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia as the main destination for militant Islamists seeking to obtain immediate combat experience with little or no official scrutiny.
Also in March, St. John's Episcopal Church in Aberdeen, Scotland, became the first church in the United Kingdom to share its premises with Muslim worshippers. Church officials now welcome hundreds of Muslims praying five times a day in their building because the nearby mosque is filled to overcapacity and Muslim worshippers are forced to pray outside.
According to the rector of St. John's, Isaac Poobalan, "Praying is never wrong. My job is to encourage people to pray. The mosque was so full at times, there would be people outside in the wind and rain praying. I knew I couldn't just let this happen, because I would be abandoning what the Bible teaches us about how we should treat our neighbors."
The bishop of Aberdeen, Robert Gillies, says that by handing over sections of the church to the mosque, the church has accomplished "something of global significance on a local scale."
In April, a documentary secretly filmed inside several of the 85 Islamic Sharia Law courts operating in Britain exposed the systematic discrimination that many women are suffering at the hands of Muslim jurists.
The documentary, Secrets of Britain's Sharia Courts, was filmed by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and was first aired on BBC Panorama, a long-running current affairs program, on April 8.
The undercover investigation proves what has long been suspected: namely, that Sharia courts, which operate in mosques and houses across Britain, routinely issue rulings on domestic and marital issues according to Islamic Sharia law that are at odds with British law. Although Sharia rulings are not legally binding, those subject to the rulings often feel obliged to obey them as a matter of religious belief, or because of pressure from family and community members to do so.
The documentary contends that the Sharia courts, run by Muslim judges known as qadi, are putting women at risk of violence from abusive husbands by pressuring them to stay in abusive marriages.
The documentary was partially filmed at the Leyton Sharia Council, which openly states on its website that it is preparing for the full recognition of Islamic Sharia law in Britain.
Also in April, British authorities promised to redouble their fight against the spiraling problem of female genital mutilation (FGM) after a weekly primetime television show broadcast by the BBC forced the previously "taboo" subject into mainstream debate.
BBC One's Casualty, a popular emergency medical drama series, became the first mainstream drama on British television to feature a story about FGM. Scriptwriters on the series worked with FGM pressure groups and young girls to produce the two-part drama, which aired on April 6 and 13.
Britain has the highest levels of FGM in Europe. According to a government-funded study published in 2007, at least 66,000 women and girls in Britain have had the procedure performed on them, and more than 20,000 girls under the age of 15 are currently at risk.
These figures, however, may be only the tip of the iceberg. A 2011 Department of Health policy paper warns that "it is possible that, due to population growth and immigration from practicing countries…FGM is significantly more prevalent than these figures suggest."
On April 29, Scotland Yard [London Police] appealed for information to identify the perpetrators of FGM amid growing indications that girls in the capital are being "cut."
But the government's commitment to fighting FGM remains to be seen. A major reason for Britain's dismal record at bringing perpetrators to justice is tolerance of FGM due to political correctness and concerns over "cultural sensitivity," according to many analysts.
Although the mainstream media in Britain and elsewhere routinely take pains to avoid any insinuation that FGM has anything to do with Islam, doctrinally, historically, geographically and juridically, the practice is intrinsically linked to Islam. Critics of FGM say there is a reluctance to tackle the problem because doing so is perceived as attacking Islam.
In May, new census data published by the British government showed that Islam is set to become the dominant religion in Britain within the next generation.
The report, published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on May 16, shows that although Christianity is still the main religion in Britain—over 50% of the population describe themselves as such—nearly half of all Christians in Britain are over the age of 50, and, for the first time ever, fewer than half under the age of 25 describe themselves as Christian.
By contrast, the number of people under 25 who describe themselves as Muslim has doubled over the past ten years: one in ten under the age of 25 are Muslim, up from one in 20 in 2001.
If current trends continue—a Muslim population boom, combined with an aging Christian demographic and the increasing secularization of British natives—Islam is set to overtake Christianity in Britain within the next 20 years, according to demographers.
Also in May, a BBC documentary called "Married for a Minute" reported that an increasing number of Muslims in Britain are reviving the Islamic practice of temporary marriage.
Temporary marriage—a euphemism for religiously sanctioned prostitution—is an Islamic custom that unites a man and an unmarried woman as "husband and wife" for a limited period of time (sometimes for less than half an hour).
The proliferation of temporary marriages—combined with the spike in polygamous marriages— shows how Muslims in Britain are using Islamic Sharia law with impunity to establish parallel forms of "marriage" that are otherwise illegal for non-Muslims in the country.
Because of the informal nature of temporary marriage, there are no official statistics to show how many of these unions there are in Britain. But Islamic scholars interviewed by the BBC say the practice is widespread, and anecdotal evidence suggests it is especially popular among the younger generation of Muslims in England and Wales.
In June, the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales (aka the Old Bailey) sentenced seven members of a Muslim child grooming gang based in Oxford to at least 95 years in prison for raping, torturing and trafficking British girls as young as 11.
The high-profile trial, which ended on June 27, was the latest in a rapidly growing list of grooming cases that are forcing politically correct Britons to confront the previously taboo subject of endemic sexual abuse of children by predatory Muslim paedophile gangs.
The 18-week trial drew unwelcome attention to the sordid reality that police, social workers, teachers, neighbors, politicians and the media have for decades downplayed the severity of the crimes perpetrated against British children because they were afraid of being accused of "Islamophobia" or racism.
According to government estimates that are believed to be "just the tip of the iceberg," at least 2,500 British children have so far been confirmed to be victims of grooming gangs, and another 20,000 children are at risk of sexual exploitation. At least 27 police forces are currently investigating 54 alleged child grooming gangs across England and Wales.
Also in June, a Muslim cab driver named Mohamed Hacene-Chaouch was jailed for seven years and three months after being found guilty of raping a female passenger in his unlicensed taxi. Hacene-Chaouch—an Algerian married father of five—assaulted the woman after she got lost in Soho, central London.
The case drew public attention to a wave of sex crimes involving predatory Muslim taxi drivers who are raping female passengers. The number of so-called taxi rapes is snowballing to such an extent that a British judge has issued a warning that no woman can expect to be safe while traveling in a cab.
Reliable statistics on taxi rapes nationwide are difficult to obtain, and Freedom of Information requests seeking accurate data on cab-related sexual assaults are routinely denied (here and here).
However, a much acclaimed report produced by the London Metropolitan Police Service estimates that on average there are a total of 1,125 sexual assaults, including rapes, each year involving taxi drivers just in London; this works out to approximately 22 sexual assaults against women by taxi drivers each week in the capital city of England alone.
Meanwhile, Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller—two well-known counter-jihad activists who are opposed to the spread of Sharia law in the West—were banned from Britain under the so-called Unacceptable Behavior policy, following a personal intervention from Home Secretary Theresa May.
In a letter posted on the Internet, May writes: "The Home Secretary will seek to exclude an individual if she considers that his or her presence in the UK is not conducive to the public good. We condemn all those whose behaviors and views run counter to our shared values and will not stand for extremism in any form."
It later emerged that the main reason why Spencer and Geller were banned from Britain was because of their strong support for Israel.
At the same time, the British government had no problems with allowing the Saudi Sheikh Adel al-Kalbani—who says all Jews and Christians should be removed from the Arabian Peninsula—to embark upon a speaking tour of Britain.
Britain also allowed into the country another Saudi hate preacher, Mohammed al-Arefe, who has said: "Devotion to jihad for the sake of Allah, and the desire to shed blood, to smash skulls, and to sever limbs for the sake of Allah and in defense of His religion, is, undoubtedly, an honor for the believer. Allah said that if a man fights the infidels, the infidels will be unable to prepare to fight."
In July, a House of Commons research report entitled "Prison Population Statistics" showed that the number of Muslim inmates in England and Wales jumped to 11,248 in 2012, up from 3,681 in 1997. It was the first time that the number of Muslim convicts in British prisons has surpassed the 11,000 mark. Stated another way, the number of Muslims in British prisons has jumped by more than 200% over the past 15 years.
The rate of increase of Muslim inmates in British prisons is eight times faster than that of the overall prison population, and the numbers show a clear overrepresentation of Muslim convicts: Muslims, who make up roughly 5% of the British population as a whole, now make up 13% of the British prison population (compared to just 6% in 1997).
The growth in the number of Muslim inmates has fueled fears that British prisons are becoming hotbeds for Islamic radicalization.
Although most of the Muslims in British prisons are immigrants from Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, an increasing number of Muslim inmates are converts to Islam.
Writing in the July 2013 issue of the prisoner's magazine, Inside Time, a "long serving prisoner" at the Long Lartin Prison in Worcestershire has this to say: "We are able to cook our own food here but if we attempt to cook pork in the communal kitchen it is deemed dangerous, even a threat to your life. The kitchen is usually occupied by 90% Muslims and we have been told if we cook pork we will be stabbed. There have been incidents here where people have been targeted and pressured and bullied into converting to Islam."
He adds: "I am writing to inform people of these radical extremists views in this prison where I see no official steps being taken to combat them. Young Muslim men are being radicalized in here and one day they may commit acts of terrorism in this country. There seems to be nothing being done here to stop it and people are scared to speak out. I hope we get some feedback from this; it needs to be sorted out."
In August, an Islamic television channel based in Birmingham was hit with a hefty fine after a Muslim hate preacher told viewers—live on air—that it was the duty of all Muslims to murder anyone who shows disrespect for the Prophet Mohammed.
Noor TV, a Satellite Television Channel that broadcasts programs about Islam throughout Europe, was fined £85,000 ($115,000) by the British broadcasting regulator known as Ofcom for inciting people to commit murder.
Ofcom said the fine imposed on August 21 was so large due to "the serious nature of the breaches of the Broadcasting Code." It said young Muslims watching Noor TV could become "radicalized" and take "violent and criminal action as a result of watching videos of Muslims with extreme views."
In a separate case, Ofcom ordered DM Digital Television to pay a fine of £85,000 ($115,000) after it broadcast a speech by an Islamic scholar who said Muslims had "a duty to kill" anyone who insulted the Prophet Mohammed.
The Manchester-based channel—which claims it has a worldwide audience of 30 million—describes itself as bringing "Asian and English cultures closer" by integrating its people, the cultural diversity, communities and the economy.
In its ruling, Ofcom cited a program called Rehmatul Lil Alameen [Mercy unto the Worlds] which featured a live lecture it said was "likely to encourage or incite the commission of crime or to lead to disorder."
Ofcom stated that some of the comments on the program could be seen as "a generic call to all Muslims encouraging or inciting them to criminal action or disorder, by unambiguously stating that they had a duty to kill anyone who criticizes or insults the Prophet Mohammed and apostates."
In September, the Birmingham Metropolitan College reversed a ban on Islamic veils after furious Muslim students complained of discrimination, and launched an online petition drive that gathered more than 8,000 signatures in just two days.
The college backed away from its ban on September 12, just hours before a mass demonstration by hundreds of Muslim students threatened to disrupt the normal functioning of the college.
The controversy began on September 9, the first day of the autumn term, when the college announced that students and employees would be ordered to remove any face coverings so that individuals are "easily identifiable at all times."
The college's ban on face-covering niqabs or the body-covering burqas—as well as caps, hoodies and other types of head covering—was billed as a security measure.
Tory MP for Kettering Philip Hollobone told the British newspaper The Independent that the college's reversal was a shameful disgrace and argued for the urgent need for legislation to ban the niqab in all public spaces.
"People are frightened of standing up and speaking out in this discussion because of political correctness and the intolerant reaction from Muslim groups who jump up and down with fury whenever anyone says that it makes sense for people to go around with their faces perfectly visible to everyone else, which is the way human beings were created in the first place," Hollobone said.
Hollobone presented a bill in the British Parliament on September 6 that would make it illegal to wear clothing obscuring the face in public; the bill will be considered on February 28, 2014.
In a live debate entitled "Should Britain Ban the Veil?" and aired on BBC Radio 5 on September 6, Hollobone said, "Society can't function if people go around with facial coverings. If we all covered our faces the world would be a very different place. Imagine Parliament where everyone had their face covered. It makes it very difficult for the police to identify troublemakers. I am sad that legislation may be necessary to address this problem. It's basic common sense to most people. It would ultimately lead to the breakdown of our society."
Hollobone denied that his proposal amounted to an attack on Islam: "We have to be quite clear—the burka isn't religious clothing. It's a choice."
Also in September, a taxpayer-funded Muslim school in England inflamed public anger after it emerged that the institution was operating according to Islamic Sharia law.
Islamic fundamentalists running the Al-Madinah School in Derby, an industrial city in central England, had ordered all female teachers—including those who are not Muslim—to cover their heads and shoulders with a hijab, an Islamic scarf.
In addition to the strict dress code, pupils were banned from singing songs, playing musical instruments, or reading fairy tales, activities deemed to be "un-Islamic," according to non-Muslim staff members at the school.
Critics say the school—which originally marketed itself as an "inter-faith" school in order to qualify for taxpayer monies—promised that at least 50% of its students would be non-Muslim. But after it obtained £1.4 million (€1.7 million; $2.25 million) in government financing, the administrators of Al-Madinah were accused of switching gears by operating the school according to Islamic law, apparently to ensure that the school will eventually be 100% Muslim.
Also in September, the British Department of Education revealed that it is recruiting former agents of the British secret service (MI5) to investigate the alleged infiltration of British schools by Islamic extremists.
The agents will form part of a new counter-extremism unit, established to investigate schools in which radical activity has been suspected. Speaking to the Sunday Times on September 29, Education Secretary Michael Gove said some schools are being "taken over" by Muslim hardliners in the hope of radicalizing pupils and staff. He also said he was determined to "weed out" schools whose practices do not conform to British values.
A survey published by the BBC on September 25 revealed that more than a quarter of young British people distrust Muslims and feel Britain would be better off if there were fewer of them in the country. Of the 1,000 young people questioned in the survey conducted by ComRes, a leading market research agency, 27% of 18-to-24-year-olds said they did not trust Muslims, while 28% said Britain would be better off with fewer Muslims. It also emerged that 60% thought the British public had a negative image of Muslims, and 44% said Muslims do not have the same values as the rest of the population.
A separate survey published by Lord Ashcroft Polls on September 1, showed that six in ten Britons thought immigration had produced more disadvantages than advantages for their country; only 17% thought the pros outweighed the cons. The biggest concerns were about migrants claiming benefits or using public services without having contributed in return.
In London, a judge on September 16 ordered a Muslim defendant to take off her full-face veil to give evidence in court. But—in a case that made legal history—he said the woman could retain the veil for all other parts of her trial.
Judge Peter Murphy said the court should recognize "freedom of religious expression," but that allowing her to retain the niqab during her evidence, as she wanted, would "drive a coach and horses through justice administered in England and Wales for centuries." Murphy said he hoped that "Parliament or a higher court will provide a definite answer to the issue soon" to avoid "judicial anarchy."
Also in September, the British Ministry of Justice confirmed that a total of 186 Muslim inmates at three different prisons are suing the British government, claiming their human rights were violated after tests confirmed that halal food being served to them contained pork meat.
The legal cases are being brought by the prisoners under Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which affords the right to the freedom of thought, conscience and religion.
In October, more than a dozen Muslim clerics at some of the biggest mosques in Britain were caught on camera agreeing to marry off girls as young as 14.
Undercover reporters filming a documentary about the prevalence of forced and underage marriage in Britain for the television program ITV Exposure secretly recorded 18 Muslim imams agreeing to perform an Islamic marriage, known as a nikah, between a 14-year-old girl and an older man.
Although the legal age for marriage in Britain is 16, according to Sharia law girls can marry once they reach puberty. The imams who agreed to marry the girl openly mocked the legitimacy of British law, reflecting the rise of a parallel Islamic legal system in Britain.
One of the Muslim clerics who agreed to perform the underage marriage is Mohammed Shahid Akhtar, the imam of the Central Jamia Masjid Ghamkol Sharif Mosque in Birmingham, the second-largest mosque in Britain with a capacity of more than 5,000 worshippers.
On being informed that the girl did not want to get married, Akhtar replied: "She's 14. By Sharia, grace of Allah, she's legal to get married. Obviously Islam has made it easy for us. There is nothing against that. We're doing it because it's okay through Islam."
The documentary also shows Akhtar expressing his contempt for British marriage laws: "You've got the kuffars [non-believers], the law, the English people that ... you know, you can't get married twice but, by the grace of Allah, we can get married four times."
Meanwhile, British taxpayers were left to pay a legal bill of £350,000 (€410,000; $566,000) after Muslim parents went to court to win the right to shave the pubic hair of their disabled daughter.
The mother and father of the young woman, who is referred to as "ED" in court documents, said their daughter's pubic hair should be removed according to Islamic tradition. But their local council, which has cared for the disabled woman since 2008, questioned whether she had the mental capacity to consent to her hair being removed.
After more than two years of legal fights, the Muslim couple abruptly dropped the case on October 22, after a "cultural expert" concluded that "whilst there was a duty to remove pubic hair, both for religious and cultural reasons, there is an exemption for those incapacitated such as ED."
The local authority involved had incurred costs of £138,000, the couple of £82,000 and the official attorney, appearing for ED, of £130,000, with taxpayers footing the entire bill.
"This is an astonishing sum of money," a judge at London's High Court, Justice Roderic Wood, told the Daily Telegraph newspaper. "I thus remain utterly baffled by the course this litigation has taken, and perplexed by this lack of clarity in their case. Obtaining a 10-day slot of a High Court Judge's time is not easy, for there are many competing cases of equal if not greater urgency than this one."
In lead up a final hearing, which had been scheduled for late October, "a great morass" of evidence was prepared, including 740 pages of witness statements, 300 pages of expert evidence as well as other documents, the judge said.
Also in October, the London Stock Exchange said it would be launching a new Islamic bond index in an effort to establish the City of London as one of the world's leading centers of Islamic finance.
Britain also plans to become the first non-Muslim country to issue sovereign Islamic bonds, known as sukuk, beginning as early as 2014.
British Prime Minister David Cameron announced the plans during a keynote speech at the ninth World Islamic Economic Forum, which was held in London from October 29-31, the first time the event has ever been held outside the Muslim world.
"Already London is the biggest center for Islamic finance outside the Islamic world," Cameron told the audience of more than 1,800 international political and business leaders from over 115 countries.
"And today our ambition is to go further still. Because I don't just want London to be a great capital of Islamic finance in the Western world, I want London to stand alongside Dubai and Kuala Lumpur as one of the great capitals of Islamic finance anywhere in the world."
The plans are all part of the British government's strategy to acquire as big a slice as possible of the fast-growing global market of Islamic finance, which operates according to Islamic Sharia law and is growing 50% faster than the conventional banking sector.
In Scotland, meanwhile, the largest-ever immunization program was halted on October 2 after Muslim parents complained that the so-called Fluenz vaccine contained pork gelatin. The roll-out of the flu vaccine in Glasgow was postponed after parents at Glendale Primary in Pollokshields—which has a large number of Muslim pupils who cannot consume pig products for religious reasons—became aware of the ingredients and complained.
The National Health Service of Greater Glasgow and Clyde, an area that contains the overwhelming majority of the Muslims in Scotland, said that 100 Islamic scholars had agreed that pork gelatin was permissible within a vaccine, but it had postponed the vaccinations anyway "following concerns raised by a small number of parents."
A similar vaccination program in Leicestershire, England, was halted in September after the same flu vaccine was deemed to be "insensitive" to Muslims.
In November it emerged that Choukri Ellekhlifi, a British man who was killed fighting alongside al Qaeda-linked extremists in Syria, funded his trip by mugging people in an affluent area of London.
Ellekhlifi threatened victims with a Taser-style high-voltage stun gun and forced them to hand over valuables including designer watches and mobile phones.
He lived in London until a year ago when he skipped bail and travelled to Syria to join a group of Islamic extremists waging war on the Assad regime. He was one of three British men killed as their group attacked pro-government forces near the city of Aleppo on August 11. The trio were part of a group of ten British jihadists who joined up with 20 other Britons to fight with the Al-Nusra Front, allied to Al-Qaeda.
Separately, Ifthekar Jaman, a 23-year-old jihadist from Southsea, Hampshire, told Richard Watson—the host of the BBC's flagship daily news and current affairs program called Newsnight—that he traveled to Syria to fight with the Al-Qaida-linked ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant). Jaman said he supported the principle of jihad before he left Britain. He told the BBC:

I was already a jihadi [while in the UK] I understood I was on the jihadi path. Where it all began? It began from the book [the Koran]. And I read this and in there you see what jihad is about. I used to be scared of the word jihad. I once went to my sister when I was young I said to her, I saw it in the book and it said fighting. And my sister said to me jihad means what you have in your heart, what you did in your heart. This is what I was taught. It wasn't taught to me that Islam is peace and there's no fighting. It is peace but it requires fighting. The duty of a Muslim is to love jihad. One of the sayings of the prophet peace be upon him whoever does not go jihad or doesn't even talk about it dies with the characteristic of hypocrisy. I am actually a Muslim following the way I should be.

Also in November, the head of MI5 (British domestic intelligence), Andrew Parker, told the British Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee that there are thousands of people living in Britain today who support al Qaida; and the head of MI6 (British foreign intelligence), Sir John Sawers, warned that the threat of terrorist attacks against Britain is increasing. Parker said that British intelligence had foiled 34 terrorist plots since the July 7 London bombings in 2005.
In December, two Islamists, Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, were found guilty of the murder of British soldier Lee Rigby outside the Woolwich Barracks in southeast London on May 22, 2013. The crime shocked the country and has drawn nationwide attention to the rise of radical Islam in Britain.
Adebolajo, 28, and Adebowale, 22, were each accused of attacking the 25-year-old Rigby by running him over from behind with a car and then attempting to decapitate his motionless body with a meat cleaver and kitchen knives.
Both men were born in Britain and raised as Christians before converting to Islam as teenagers.
During the trial, Adebolajo said there was an ongoing "war between the Muslims and the British people" and that he was a "soldier of Allah."
Assistant London Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick, the most senior counter-terrorism officer in Britain, told the newspaper The Telegraph that British soldiers are at risk from "thousands" of lone-wolf terrorists who hold to a "perverted ideology" like the home-grown fanatics who murdered Rigby. She said the threat could never be eliminated.
Meanwhile, three Muslim men were sentenced at the Old Bailey on December 6 for confronting and abusing non-Muslims in London in January 2013. The three—who called themselves the Muslim Patrol—confronted, physically assaulted, and verbally abused members of the public whose behavior was in violation of Sharia law. They then posted the videos of their actions on YouTube.
Also in December, Marks & Spencer, the biggest clothing retailer in Britain, backed down after facing a boycott from thousands of angry customers who were furious at the store's decision to allow Muslim staff to refuse to serve customers buying alcohol or pork products during the Christmas shopping season.
The policy was revealed after customers trying to buy pork or alcohol from a Muslim cashier at an M&S store in central London were told that because of her religion, they would have to use another checkout lane.
Critics of M&S's policy of accommodation said it was just another example of how British law and practice is giving way to Islamic Sharia law and practice.gatestoneinstitute